ideas on performing "live" using ableton

[deadskeleton]

I use the term "live" loosely here because there is a limited amount of "live" things that can be done here in realtime. luckily the majority of ppl who listen to electronic music dont care or are open minded enough to not worry about how your doing it as long as it sounds good and your not just simply hitting the space bar and letting the whole song playback.

here are the elements i want to use...

mac laptop
ableton 6 (FYI, i am a noob to this program)
reason 4
korg electribe
mackie profx12
roland space echo
presonus firebox


here are my ideas

1. have individual tracks of drums, sounds, etc from a single song playing back through Ableton Live 6...1 track is kick, 1 track is snare, etc... These playback tracks WILL NOT include pad or synth sounds which are a part of the originally recorded track. These are NOT clips that i would turn on and off. These are actual wav tracks that would be layered on top of one another that in some cases, such as the drums, might have 32 measures of just silence before the drums actually come in.

2. play these "missing" instruments "live" ontop of these play back tracks such as pads or synth sounds. These would be coming from Reason 4....so i'm playing back drums and sounds of a song but i have left out certain instruments so these can actually be played on stage.

3. have some samples loaded in kontakt (acting as a plug in to ableton) or another sampler (maybe reason) and assign the samples to my akai mpk25 drum pads. These samples will be played randomly through all songs and would include vocal samples, drum hits and other odd sounds. certain samples from kontakt will be assigned to individual outputs on my sounds card going into my mackie. Here i will be able to play with the FX on these random samples.

4. I have a korg electribe that will be playing back random sounds here and there through out the set. This will be going through a couple of different flavors of guitar pedals and assigned to its own channel on the mackie. Should i go ahead and sync this MIDI even though there will be no time specific sounds or drums coming from this?

5. Vocals will be done live over all of the above.

I want to have my songs linked together in ableton playing back those songs individual tracks. The tempos for these songs are different ranging from 120-190. can you tie songs with different tempos together in ableton?

Does anybody have any better ideas or ideas on how this could be done. Can this be done using the methods mentioned? Am i thinking about this all wrong. suggestions are GREATLY GREATLY appreciated!!!!

DS
http://www.myspace.com/deadskeleton

[mojofunk]

Hi! It sounds like a fun project you are building. Everything that you propose seems definitely doable with Live, and although it is very different from how I have set out to use the program, here are some thoughts: Do your long drum tracks contain tempo information? I have no experience with this but I bet if you were to warp those tracks you will find that nice tight tempo synchronization will be quite nice, and you will have the long silences covered. Once warped you can set up scenes with the different tempos for your songs.

Does Kontact offer you some indispensible features, or simply access to samples? Live has a native sampler, or you could simply set the samples up as clips in Live and launch them at will, with FX etc. Of course it will work great as a plug in also, at the expense of some cpu.

I use an Electribe also, and have found that in order to get it synced to Lives midi you'll need to manipulate the delay settings of the midi out that you set in Lives preferences. I don't recall exactly, but I believe I ended up with like -43 milliseconds as compensation. It locks up like a charm! With some wrangling it can also be set up as a controller for Impulse or drum racks - look for posts on this forum by Trypset if you are interested in that.

I have no doubt that you will get this all happening, and you have definitely come to the right place for help with the mechanics. Along with a generous helping of silliness.

[kvitamin]

honostly, just write some music using those tools, and when it comes time to play it live, i think you'll have a much better idea of how that can happen, and what you want running through live or other programs, or what should have effects etc.

[Trypset]

much love mojo. I can def. help out with using the electribe as a controller so let me know if you have any questions OP. Your live live project sounds like a fun time. Keep us informed.

[KrisM]

honostly, just write some music using those tools, and when it comes time to play it live, i think you'll have a much better idea of how that can happen, and what you want running through live or other programs, or what should have effects etc.

This.

Me, personally, I would record the audio of Reason and chop it up as clips to launch when needed (and set follow actions for times you need to not worry about it). I know Reason is rock-solid stable for a lot of people, but it's another program running to possibly cause trouble in a live situation. I'd find a similar sound to play from Live itself or a highly-trusted plugin for an absolutely-must-be-played-manually part.

That said, do what you will (you will anyway ) and practice extensively beforehand. If it works for hours at home it's a good bet it will elsewhere.

[NPC]

sounds funny! just a couple of things: 1)be careful with long clips playing in the background...i never use them, i put everything in session view ready to be played at willing as this makes you less prone to stuff like "oh no just one bar and then the background will change..i'm late!". Plus you can change whatever you want whenever you want
and 2) i'd suggest you to create a "megaset" where you have all the clips you plan to play. This way you avoid lags between songs, and can for example mash them at will (i mostly play my stuff, no "pure djing", so i have all the stems for the various intruments). As for the tempo changes, this is not an issue as in session view you can rename a scene say "135bpm", and then when you trigger that scene the tempo changes to 135bpm.(you can also rename it 135bpm 3/4 if you play around with signatures). Gosh, so much things i'd say..better stop or this will become too long.cheers

[kvitamin]

Shameless (but related) self promotion:
My band is playing some live shows this week and next in NYC. Anyone interested in checking out our live + ableton live setup should totally come out and say hi, i'll buy the first round.

http://www.myspace.com/wearegreattiger

Shows:
Saturday July 10 @ Public Assembly in Brooklyn
Thursday July 15 @ Santos Party House in Manhattan - early show
Saturday July 17 @ Trash Bar in Brooklyn - free beer from 8-9

[oddstep]

Yeah. I'd break everything up into clips. The reason data i would either export as wav loops or control via midiclips rewired into reason. Leaving everything as stems will be fine... but there won't be much space to change things around live.... especially if you are not planning to put the stems through live fx.